


a loose bolt of a complete machine

by cloudedhues



Category: Blade Runner (1982), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick, Psycho-Pass
Genre: Androids, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Gun Violence, Intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4526115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudedhues/pseuds/cloudedhues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a classic scene between Deckard and Rachael from Blade Runner, which is itself a loose adaptation of Makishima's favorite book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</p>
            </blockquote>





	a loose bolt of a complete machine

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for Day 3 of #shinkaneweek from Tumblr.

 

* * *

 

  **replicant** -  _/ˈreplikənt/ (noun). a genetically engineered or artificial being created as an exact replica of a particular human being._

– Oxford Dictionary

 

* * *

 

 

It doesn’t take him long to spot her. Ramrod straight, hands proper on her front, her face belying nothing past decorum. She was hidden in the masses, like a nondescript cog existing in its place among the others.

Except not. In a crowd, he’d know her. He’d know her with his eyes closed.

He stares, sight blurred by drizzle, smoke and streaming passerby keeping both of them to their respective ends of the street. A man wearing a trench coat hurries in front, and her gaze keeps to him and lands on the other side, right on him, the second the man passes by his spot like he expected.

Kill the girl, they had said.

His line of sight is clear, target steady, and something in her expression tells him she is in the open on purpose. His arm drops just a slight inch lower, the gun feeling much less like an extension of his hand and more of a handcuff wrapped on his wrist.

His right foot barely makes a forward step when a force pulls him back by the scruff of his jacket.

“Kougami.”

A white flash and a solid pain in his jaw silences him from saying anything in greeting. Desmond Rutaganda tries another punch – one Kougami barely manages to avoid – and smiles congenially.

“Desmond,” Kougami says, voice muffled. “Still dying?”

“By the second.”

He takes a defensive stance and brings up his fists by instinct.

“Aren’t we all?”

He looks for an opening, tries his own swing and barely grazes the other man’s ear. The gun drops from his hand midway in his attempt to retaliate, skidding in the darkness ensconced among the street clutter.

Kougami hits him square in the jaw. Blood immediately drops from his mouth and he looks painfully human for a small second. But when he brings up his hands for a parry, Desmond doesn’t even sound winded. Just looks over at him with a countenance more suited for having a nice chat over some coffee.

“Tell me, Kougami-san, how long do I live?”

“How long do any of us get to live?” he grunts out, dodging just in time from another attempt.

“More than you, at least.”

The replicant feints a swing, ducking his head at Kougami’s own attempt and lands a punch that knocks the man back on the ground. Black spots flicker in his vision and he clutches at his stomach.

He grunts as the man lands a kick on his head.

“Humans – you’re all the same,“ the voice above him says, thick with the contrast of blood and a smile in his mouth. “Everything you’ve been given you’ll ruin with a touch. What makes you more deserving of life than us?”

Kougami swallows a groan at another kick. 

"Beats me,” he coughs out. “When I find the answer, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

Desmond laughs, his boot making a perfect imprint on the side of Kougami’s face. “I don’t think either of us’ll have enough time for that.”

A hundred possible responses fly into his mind at the initial second the replicant can drop his foot again but before either can act on it, he feels more than hears the solid click of the safety being turned off.

“Let him go,” a voice, quiet but firm, says close by. He wants to tell her to run, to leave this. But he knows she won’t, knows it the way he knows her with his eyes closed.

“And what do you propose to do with that? Shoot me?” he hears Desmond laugh. “I know you, little girl. You really think you have it in you to kill your own kind?”

He can feel her hesitating but the distraction is all he needs as Kougami swings his leg to topple the other man over. He rights to his feet and barely registers Desmond making a scramble towards him when a shot and red spray prevents him from making any further movement.

“Fuck! You bitch!” he screams, clutching at his leg, at the bullet lodged between flesh and metal and all the nerve receptors in between.

Kougami limps towards her, hand waiting as she drops his gun on his palm like a scalding poker. He ignores her shaking fingers, the cold sweat around the grip, and brings the barrel straight on Desmond’s temple.

The replicant’s shoulders are slack but he is not looking at him with defeat. In fact, he’s not looking at him at all.

“You’re no better than them,” he tells her like a death sentence before jerking back at the shot, red spray misting the air again, and wilting to the ground with a thud of finality.

Of course, only then does the rain pick up in intensity.

“Let’s get out of here,” he tells her through the sheet of the downpour. He can’t see her face clearly but then again, he doesn’t have to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The room is freezing when he swings the door open.

He goes through the motions of coming to his dark apartment, unbuttons his shirt and throws it somewhere in the pile of whatever else has found residence on his floor. His shaking fingers have already lighted a cigarette before he is aware of it. The smoke briefly obscuring his vision of her still shivering by the threshold.

“You gonna stand there all night?”

He breathes out a cloud of ash and leans back against the bar counter. She bristles a bit but keeps her eyes locked with his when she steps through and closes the door behind her with a gentle shut.

They keep to their stalemate, silent and too sullen to make any sudden movements. Just when he is about to break the moment himself, she beats him to it by the surprising squeak of her sneezing. The corner of his mouth twitches despite himself, and he crushes his cigarette on an ashtray.

“Sorry. Forgot my manners.” He waves a hand to dispel the smoke, considers opening the window for a second before remembering how little effect that would have. “Are you cold?”

She looks surprised at the question and averts her eyes.

“I suppose.”

The tone in her voice tells him something else.  _Does it matter?_  she asks.

He briefly disappears to his room, coming back not long after with a jacket big enough on her to be considered a blanket. He ignores her waiting hand and drapes it around her himself, fixing the collar straight, watching her with a practiced eye.

“Better?”

She stares back, eyes tired. “Is it?”

“Well, you were shivering,” he explains needlessly, hand useless as it lingered by the buttons near her collarbone. “The shakes, I mean. I get them, too. It’s part of the business.”

Her blinks come in rapid succession – almost impossibly so – but there’s a shimmer of moistness held back. A little contradiction existing for just that moment.

“I’m not in the business,” she says like a fact. “I am the business.”

She lifts her chin.

“There’s blood on your face,” she says as frankly and as easily as if she were acknowledging the weather.

Without warning, she lifts a hand to his cheek and he stills. Her hand retreats, opens as if asking for permission. Slowly like a cornered animal in hesitation, he leans against her palm and she cradles his face like something fragile, her thumb poised on his chin as she tilts his head back to see better.

Her fingers are freezing.

He holds his breath.

“That’s a serious cut you have there.” She peers closer.

“Yeah?”

“Do you not feel that?”

She reaches for a handkerchief in her pocket and carefully presses at his jaw. He flinches but settles as she dabs to clean around the cut.

“Can I be frank with you?” she asks as she minds her work.

“I’d be offended if you already aren’t.”

“Am I safe?”

He grips her hand midway through her ministrations and for a brief, wondrous moment, the passing lights from outside illuminate their tethered hold in perfect clarity. Not long but just enough to make his heart remember.

“No one will touch you while you’re here,” he says, voice murmuring with quiet intensity.

Kougami leaves her for the kitchen, feeling the loss of her hand as he returns to a safe distance to rummage through his cabinet for a bottle of whiskey.

“Are you sure?”  
  
He’s gotten proficient at translating her words and little desire to play along. Her creator may have coddled her to the point of sparing her any human feeling but he finds no use for such sentiment.

“I thought we were being frank here. You wanna try that again?”

She stares at him, stiff hands curling and stubborn despite the trepidation radiating off her. “Are you going to kill me?”

“A little too late to be asking that,” he remarks with dry amusement as he pops the cap off and takes a healthy swig. He stares at the mass of shapes ensconced in the darkness of the room, watches it brighten then fade with every passing light of the hovercrafts peeking behind his window.

“If I wanted to kill you,” he says more to himself than her. “I wouldn’t have taken you back here with me.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question.”

She stands in front of him, tilting the dynamic again. She corners as the owner of the territory this time and he the feral anomaly encroaching.

He runs a tired hand through his hair and placates, "No, Tsunemori. I’m not going to kill you.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

He looks away and falls quiet, returning both of them to chafe in another moment of useless uncertainty. He supposes it is his turn now to break the silence.

He takes a final drink and hands her the bottle.

"I’m going to sleep.” He doesn’t look back as he retreats to his room. “Up to you if you want to do the same.”

The door gives a satisfying click as it closes him away from her and all her contradictions. Sleep can’t come too soon when he drops to his bed with little grace.

The other room is quiet amid the patter of rain outside. He wonders if she’ll leave before he wakes and the thought of it is the last in his mind before he succumbs to a dreamless sleep.

  
  


 

 

 

He wakes to music.

For a second, his mind is in another time. Another time in a less complicated world when his mother taught him how to play an instrument he keeps more out of obligation than personal attachment.

His feet lead him out, to her at the piano bench, playing a simple tune from long before. Pachelbel, Strauss, it seems to fit her fingers whatever it is.

“You play?”

She presses the last key to the song, not surprised at all by his appearance. “Not well.”

He stands behind her, watches over her shoulder at her pale hands motionless over the white keys.

“Didn’t sound like it.”

“It’s just practiced. There’s no feeling in it.”

“I should be the judge of that. Play it again.”

Her shoulders stiffen, wary but compliant before her fingers fall on the keys like magnets caught on metal.

It’s flawless. The tempo, the rhythm, the melody. Not one note misplaced through it all. He closes his eyes, his mind drifting. When she finishes, she draws back, like a marionette returning to its strings.

“That was perfect.”

“Exactly,” she says and her little fists look defeated against the black and white.

“What other songs do you know?”

“Everything and anything you ask for.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Before she can respond, he seats himself on the bench and she barely manages to accommodate. Right leg to her left. His fingers drape on the ivories next to hers.

“What are you doing?” she asks, wariness returned.

“Showing you something you don’t know.”

He hovers above the keys as if poised to start and it only takes a short moment before she does as well.

The music drifts in again as an exact replay from earlier. She is at the third bar before he joins in, and the effect at first is dissonant and ruinous of the previous. But in no time at all, their hands right themselves to each other, notes chasing but never making contact.

He doesn’t look at her once. Only at her hands, now livelier than methodical. She improvises somewhere in the middle, nearly brushing his territory and he raises an eyebrow in amusement trying to catch up.

The crescendo peaks.

Without warning, he leans around her back, right arm stretching as his fingers reach for the keys to her right. The bench is not big enough for them both but that is a detail that matters little. She arches to him by accident, close but not close enough. One accidental bump of his index finger to her knuckle brings her head back to his cheek. He can feel her breathing and knows she can feel him, too.

The song is over before their fingers realize and they stay: back to his chest, head at the crook of his neck, simply breathing in the scent of her hair. Only when she draws her hands back does he return, safe distance established again.

She looks a little breathless when she stares at the music sheet, her pupils dark and alive. “I’ve never played it like that before.”

“Good,” he offers her his first smile that night. “It’s strange how little you actually have to do to make a carbon copy into something more original, don’t you think?”

Her breathing evens out, the music no longer vibrating in her skin. She is the one to retreat this time, picking up her feet away from him as she moves to the window still streaming with rain.

“I should go.”

“Where?” He stands, watches her back.

“I don’t know.”

He wants to ask her what she is so afraid of here that she’d risk it out there alone. She looks small and afraid and he finds himself close behind her, his hand curling at her side.

Her voice drops. “You are making this very difficult.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he whispers, breath fanning on the back of her neck.

“I can’t trust…my memories. I can’t trust myself with this.“

“But do you trust me?”

“I shouldn’t,” she pauses. “But I do. I trust you.”

“Then take my word for this.”

He drops his face to the side of her neck, and leaves a mark that is more breath than touch by her throat. His fingers trail from up her navel, stopping just at the edge above her right breast to splay his palms against the skin above her heart.

“Do you feel that?”

“I–I–” 

She closes her eyes, lost when he crowds her in, letting herself open to him as he buries himself further in to try under her jaw.

“How about now?”

He nips, languidly stroking at the mark he’d left with his thumb. His hand leaves her briefly then travels, curling his fingers around her neck like a kiss. She is so vulnerable now, her eyes fluttering open to meet his with such openness that would make it so unfairly easy. He could break her at this point. Choke her if necessary. Be done with this job, this responsibility of hunting once and for all after this kill.

She knows this.

But his fingers are pulsing with something unfamiliar, some need, as if her heartbeats had stitched themselves on his hand like a scar. In the shrouded space between them lit by nothing but a candle and the dirty neon of the city outside, he can see his hands tethered between a choice. He sees them fully visible for once. As if it had never known the stain of his duty, not marked of the blood of what humans called artificial, of her own kind, before this moment.

“You could do it,” she tells him. “You could do it right now.”

Had she been reading his thoughts? He looks for an answer in her faint reflection on the window. Its only response is to gleam unnaturally against the passing light – a reminder of what they could be breaking apart at this moment.

“I’m not like you,” she continues, shaking but earnest as if confessing held no weight to her. “No one would blame you, you know.”

“And you? Would you blame me for what I’d do?”

“Yes,” Her breath hitches with guilt. “But I would forgive you regardless.”

He studies her, and with that, comes to a decision he’d been avoiding.

“Forgive me then.”

A question in her reflection is the last thing he sees before he answers anyway, taking her with not even a bit of an apology for it. She gasps into his mouth in surprise and he takes that for himself as well, turning her around completely so she is pressed up against him, soft and so breakable as his hands find purchase in all her hidden surfaces. His tongue lingers and she tastes like rain and a little bit like whiskey, which is fitting because his head feels like it’s drowning.

When he breathes, her perfect lips are no longer perfect, the rouge smeared as a mark of his handiwork. Everything he touches he ruins – that was the way of humans. But this time, he doesn’t think he has ever seen anything or anyone more beautiful.

“I can stop,” he tells her.

“That’s not what I want.”

“Then what do you want?” he asks, voice dark with a guttural edge, reminding her of her promise of honesty.

“I … ” She grips his collar, her arms trapped between them both as he teases her breath, drawing in and out but never fully coming into contact. “I want you.”

“Again,” he tells her lips.

“I want you.”

He lets out a small laugh and wonders if she shivers because of it.

“You were right. You’re nothing like us.” He retreats again to her heart but this time, takes her hand and drapes it over his, now both breathing in time together to feel the steady proof that contradicted everything she was supposed to stand for.

“You’re better.”

He whispers to her the truth that matters. The only one he gives a damn about.

“You’re alive.”

He takes back what he thought earlier. 

Her lips look far better like this. 

Because there is some sort of benediction in that smile she gives him then, something purer than any attempts of redemption he’d crawled on his knees for before. Humans are selfish, prone to debase themselves for the sake of animalistic urges.

He doesn’t know why she longs so much to be like them.

So he steals that smile too, drinks her in like a man burning his lungs for water. This time, she is the one to take the lead, dragging her fingers through his hair, his body to hers with the promise to lose themselves as proof of something they both already knew.

“Do you feel that?” she asks in between and he realizes she is repeating his words from earlier.

“Yes,” he answers for both of them, his breath gentle against her skin. “Of course I do.”


End file.
